About one block east of the site of the Gray Laboratory School stood Fort Holes, a short-lived reminder of the panic that accompanied the Sioux uprising of 1862. As fighting flared, frightened settlers streamed into nearby villages, where stockades were erected, and Fort Holes was one of many such defenses. Named for militia captain Samuel Holes, whose advice guided its construction and who helped build it, the fort overlooked the river, the flats to the south, and the river landing at the foot of what is now Tenth Street. Jane Grey Swisshelm described its outer wall as a framework planked on the outside from ten to twelve feet high and sloping outward so it could not be scaled with a ladder, three feet thick at the base and one and one-half feet thick at a height of six or seven feet, and filled with soil, with two entrances hung with heavy gates. Fort Holes was never used by St. Cloud residents because the danger of attack faded, though it did shelter refugees from the countryside. By 1864 the fort was rapidly disappearing as new settlers carried off the lumber, and by 1875 it had vanished.